Continue reading »]]> The  weather forecast was not an encouraging one for today’s monthly meeting at the association apiary and of course, as always, the forecasters had to get it right.  They never quite seem to do the same when the forecast is for blazing sun do they?!

Brrrr...

In any case an intrepid band of Moray beekeepers braved the conditions to make an appearance at the apiary.  There was never really any chance of us managing to open the hives and do the work that we had planned.

Bees staying at home

So Plan B was put in place.  This involved Tony our secretary giving a talk on queen clipping and marking using the very nifty Powerpoint presentation he has meticulously prepared.  No-one thought however to ask the permission of the projector and it proceeded to billow smoke into the air giving up the ghost once and for all.  Plan C was hastily improvised and involved Tony’s talk minus the audio-visuals.  Thankfully there were no further gremlins and after the talk a most welcome cup of tea was had.

Chat and a warm drink

At which point the sun even decided to make a quick appearance!

Sun coming through

The last piece of business was to draw the raffle and the lucky winners got some very nice prizes.  Here’s hoping our May meeting is blessed wih better conditions and we actually get to do some beekeeping!

The lucky winners!

Continue reading »]]> Last summer I found myself on the way to a house at Moss of Barmuckity where I was reliably informed there was an abandoned hive in the garden, still occupied by bees. Upon arrival I spoke to the owner, Jimmy, who told me his father had been an avid beekeeper but had now moved into a care home, and a swarm had moved into one of his old hives the previous summer. I told Jimmy I would have a look and then report back to him.

So I donned my beesuit, lit my smoker and made my way to the very back of the garden where sure enough was a rather old and battered beehive, with honey bees coming and going from the entrance and they seemed happy enough.

I puffed a little smoke over the entrance, waited for a couple of minutes and removed the roof. My eyes fell onto an old straw skep and when I removed the box from around it I could see that the skep was occupied by bees and it was firmly stuck to the top bars of the hive. What should I do now? I pondered.

I gave them some more smoke and started trying to prise the skep upwards and after about 10 minutes it was free. I lifted it up to reveal the wild honeycomb the bees had built in the skep. The bees were getting pretty bad tempered by now but I decided to crack on. I thought that if I smoked the skep and hive heavily (with the skep still in place) I would drive the queen down into the main hive and then I would place a queen excluder between the main hive and the skep. So I gave them a lot more smoke, waited a bit and gave them even more smoke. I removed the skep and then just about managed to go through the brood chamber although it wasn’t easy as the bees had built their own comb loosely around the frames that had been inside. The good news was that there were eggs, larvae and sealed brood present and the colony didn’t seem unduly affected by varroa. I couldn’t however find the queen!

I re-assembled the hive, placed a queen excluder over the brood box and then placed the skep back on top followed by the roof. I would return in a couple of days time, transfer the bees into an empty hive before moving them to our training apiary at Birnie. As I was tidying up my attention was drawn to a lot of bees that were still on the board where I had placed the brood chamber and upon closer examination I saw to my dismay a recently dead queen laying there . The best laid plans hey!

My option now was to let the bees make emergency queen cells and to return after 7 days just leaving 1 sealed cell from which hopefully a new queen would emerge, mate and begin laying.

So I did return a week later and when I opened up the hive there were no emergency queen cells. In fact, the bees seemed in quite a good mood and where busily bringing in pollen. And there were eggs present! What did this mean and what to do now? Well, there was obviously a queen present so I decided to split the colony, leaving half the bees in the old hive and placing the other half in a new hive. This task was made easier when I found the queen and she and her frame of brood and bees were removed into my new hive, along with 2 additional frames of brood, bees and a frame of stores. I sealed it up and took it to our training apiary where it still is, the bees having come through the winter successfully. The other hive managed to raise another queen and they too have successfully wintered in one of my own apiaries.

In trying to figure out what had happened in the hive, i.e. it appeared there were 2 queens in it, I found out that that this does happen now and again. Sometimes the bees will be replacing an aging queen and they will raise a new one. Mother and daughter will happily survive in the hive, often found laying on the same comb until the ‘old’ queen finally dies or is ‘seen off’ by the workers. This is known as ‘supersedure’. The other point is that there was a lot of space between the bottom brood chamber and the top skep in this hive and this sometimes leads to 2 queens surviving in the same hive. Good eh!

I will be re-visiting Jimmy in the summer to see whether a swarm has moved into the abandoned hive, and perhaps I will do it all over again. Jimmy was more than happy as he was compensated with with a couple of jars of local honey and some cut comb heather honey. YUM, YUM!

Continue reading »]]> Those of you who read this blog and who keep bees will no doubt have heard of the name Brother Adam.  In short Brother Adam was a monk of Buckfast Abbey who spent his entire life devoted to beekeeping and bee breeding.  He developed the Buckfast bee and was a hugely influential figure in beekeeping circles.  On his death his legacy was preserved by many breeders in Europe but in the UK he is a figure of some controversy.  One school believes that only native bees should be kept (although it’s unclear how native our native bees actually are) and Brother Adam’s views and practices are anathema to them.

Others are more open minded and some have founded a Buckfast breeders group.  The founders have even gone so far to re-open the famous Buckfast Dartmoor mating station and the story of that can be found if you follow the link below.

Re-activation of the Dartmoor mating station.

Continue reading »]]> The evening of Thursday 26th January saw Moray Beekeepers hold their AGM in Elgin library.

The calm before...

We had plenty of business to conduct and were hopeful of a good turnout.

A good turnout

Luckily more than 30 members decided to attend.  We managed to conduct a review of 2011 of both MBA’s activities and finances and also outline some of our plans for 2012.  We wanted to increase our subscription rates by a small amount and the meeting was supportive of that.

Some of the successful participants of summer 2011′s Basic Beemaster course were presented with their certificates as were Barbara Westie and Tony Harris with their certificates for their continued beekeeping exam success.

The certificate crowd

The business concluded it was time to  concentrate on the more social side of things.  A fine spread of cakes to go with our tea and coffee had been provided by committee member Anne Black and we had a good range of raffle prizes.

The spread

It was nice to see some familiar faces and to meet some new ones.

Mingling

Once tea and cakes were down the hatch we held a question and answer session with a panel of experienced beekeepers (there are no pics of that I’m afraid as I was on the panel!).  Many intelligent and interesting questions were asked and I think the answers were satisfactory.  At least the old saying that  ” if you ask X beekeepers a question you get X+1 answers” didn’t come into play!

Continue reading »]]> Contributing author:  Viv Hill

I am happy to write in glowing terms of the success of our three week sugar collection project.

Initially I wrote to all the local Supermarkets and was disappointed that only the three local Tesco Stores responded. Therefore plans were made with them.

Graham and I made some cardboard collection boxes and I had the two information placards laminated, attaching one of each to the boxes plus a plastic envelope containing our M.B.A. handouts with an invitation that folk should take one. I have to say that the staff at both of the Tesco Stores were most helpful.   The boxes were put in place on Monday, 18^th July. Thereafter we went to Forres every Monday to empty the box and similarly collected the Elgin sugar packets each time we were in the store.  The M.B.A. handouts were very popular and frequently needed replenishing.

To our surprise and pleasure we were contacted by the Asda Supermarket in Elgin who, having become aware of our project, was also keen to help us. Another box was found and placed in the store and so now we are also collecting from Asda in Elgin. Their collection point is only available on Friday to Sunday but their Charity P.A. is happy to liaise with me and she puts the box out and away at the weekends. The Asda ‘lady’ is very interested in our project and I am hopeful that we can make further plans.

To date we have collected the grand total of 110 Kgs. of sugar with more to come. I have not included the amount which has been donated at Buckie Tesco Store as Tony Harris is dealing with it.

Andrew Tassell has recently placed a donation box at Tesco Store in Keith and so with those two also ‘on board’ I am sure that we will reach the projected goal of 200Kgs.  Many thanks and a big ‘Well done’ to the Moray public for being so generous. I hope that we will be able to have a similar collection next year.

Continue reading »]]>

Donate some bags of sugar!

Contributing author:  Viv Hill

Moray Beekeepers have taken the initiative to ask our local supermarkets to assist in their bee feeding programme.  Any members of the public who are so inclined will be able to find boxes at either Forres, Elgin or Buckie Tesco stores.

for the next three weeks from July 18th – 8th  August  so please tell all your friends and other like minded people that we will be very glad of their help.

The focus of our initiative is to ask members of the public to donate a bag of cane sugar with a view to them helping the local beekeepers both prepare their bees for the winter and ensure that there is adequate food for the bees over that period.

Please help us by telling everyone about our project.  Many thanks.

Continue reading »]]> Contributing author: Viv  Hill

After days of looking at a distinctly unoptimistic weather forecast you will not need to use your imagination to know how happy we were when the day dawned bright and sunny and, more to the point ,stayed that way.  Graham and Viv Hill were pleased to welcome the 40 or more members that turned up and, having worried about the parking facilities, drew a huge sigh of relief that there was no problem at all.

The hives were opened by Andrew Tassell and Tony Harris who was ably assisted by Stephen Palmer. Tony was able to demonstrate the practice of ‘Artificial Swarming’ using a nucleus hive and Andrew went into a further two hives where, in the first, he found Queen cells but no apparent Queen and so one open Queen cell was left. In the other he both found and marked the Queen. As Andrew was working with many of our newer members who have yet to have a hive of their own, and some who have, this proved to be very instructional and those with Andrew were pleased that they had the opportunity to see some very interesting hive work. Those with Tony had his expert instruction on swarm management and that too was felt to be most useful.

Graham moved between the two groups assisting as and when and Viv was the ‘Tea Lady’, and quite frankly couldn’t have been more pleased as the temperature was soaring and shade was undoubtedly the best place to be!! Two of the younger members had to be ‘rescued’ as they were far too hot in their bee suits.

The raffle was a success with many and differing prizes. I must add another word of thanks to William Hill, Graham’s son at whose home the apiary is situated. A good time was had by all and ‘the tea lady’ served out tea for well over an hour.

Needless to say all of the biscuits and cakes disappeared.

Continue reading »]]> Contributing author:  Viv Hill

Everyone is going to love this!!!

Well I do.

V. x.

Continue reading »]]> So we got a message at the weekend that a swarm had arrived and taken up residence in someone’s loft near Elgin.  Bees had been there before and this swarm had discovered the old combs left behind by the previous owners.  All perfectly accessible we were assured.  I should have known at that point that it was not going to be a simple retrieval.  But the chance of some free bees is a hard one to pass up.

Monday morning found me lying flat out on my front in full beesuit and veil in the dark (lit only by a torch) blinded by sweat, surrounded by bees and trying in vain to remove them from their combs into my lovely new polystryrene nuc box – the combs had been built into the darkest tightest corner of the eaves of the roof .   To describe what it was like there as a scene from hell wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration!   I brushed and scooped as many bees into the box as possible hoping that the queen would be among them and that all the rest would be keen to join her.   I departed drenched in sweat and beesuit filthy to allow them to settle and remove them on Tuesday.

On Tuesday I returned to find the box containing only a couple of frames worth of bees and no queen.   The rest of them were tucked out of reach on the remaining combs in the furthest reaches of the eaves.  I had failed miserably!

I moved them back to the association apiary and to give them a chance of survival I gave them one of our queens from our queen rearing project.   I went back again today but this time armed with three frames of brood and bees from my own colonies and gave them to the nuc.

All being well I’ve got the beginnings of another colony which I can build up for the winter and hopefully next summer get me some honey!

But next time someone mentions lofts and bees I think I’ll pass on the opportunity.

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Feeling the heat!

Contributing author:  Viv Hill

Saturday July 2 proved to be a wonderfully sunny and calm day – just right for our Beekeeping exam.  We were thrilled to have Ian Craig, a most senior Scottish beekeeper, to come and be our examiner and the first examinee started at 9 a.m.

As our out-apiary is now well equipped with hives and bees it proved to be an excellent place to hold the exam with more than enough hives to provide Ian and the candidates with a satisfactory opportunity to ‘display’ their abilities.

Under scrutiny

As is becoming the custom in the Moray Beekeepers Association the day was marked with good humour and lots of laughter all of which helped those being examined to ‘keep calm and carry on’.

Tony and Viv spent a good deal of the day there both assisting in the progress of the examination and innumerable cups of tea, chocolate buns and shortbread.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil!

It is wonderful to be able to say that not only did all the seven candidates satisfy the examiner but all passed with a Distinction which is a mark of more than 75%. It is quite unnecessary to say that we were all thrilled and much congratulating was to be seen and heard!!

It goes without saying that the Committee is thrilled and most gratified to know that the hard work that has been put in by all during the last winter and spring period has paid off ‘in buckets’.

Our other wonderful news is that the Portacabin, which was sourced by John Baillie, has arrived and is already proving to be a huge asset.

The successful candidates (except Gerry and plus Ian and Tony!)

The day finished at 4.15 p.m. and many tired but happy folk set off to their respective homes with broad smiles on their faces.

The Committee of Moray Beekeepers would like to offer their sincere appreciation and thanks to Ian Craig for travelling almost the entire length of Scotland to conduct the examinations so very professionally.

Candidates:  Gerry Thompson, Wendy Jamieson, Donna Clark, Andrew Watson, John Baillie, Pamela Nairn, Graham Hill.